An 84 VF 500 F's tale

I have been involved with you previously in regard to my 86 VFR 700 F2. Its running daily now, but not up to my expectations. More on it later, I have now switched to my son's 84 VF 500 F. You might remember that I am an advocate of taking the top end down to the point where the heads can be retorqued before going into the tuning of any vehicle. My son lives apart from me (divorce) and he bought against my better judgment, an 84 VF 500F off a small Christian College student on the other side of LA from either of us. It was bad deal from the get go. Last week I got to see the bike on a jack for the first time, partially disassembled, in preparation for a valve adjustment.
I had the experience of taking my 86 VFR 700 cam mechanism apart (gear driven cams) behind me. The VF 500 was, however, a far more complicated procedure. I did not intend to attempt it except that when I went to do the valve adjustment I was unable to replicate what I had observed on the VFR 700. That is, that the cam lobe ends did not seem to automatically point at 11 and 1 o'clock when moving through the successive TDC firing positions in order to check the original valve lash clearances. Cylinders 1 and 3 were just what I expected from the work I had done on the VFR, but cylinders 2 and 4 were way off, especially with respect to the front head's exhaust valve timing, which appeared to be around 30 degrees advanced. The forward head intake valves were also off, retarded by 10 degrees. I was flabbergasted.
I had personally twisted my sons arm to get him to do a compression test before he rushed impatiently into purchasing the ’84 VF. The compression had been 160 psi on all cylinders with the motor moderately warmed up. I never rode the bike, not having a helmet at the time. He was, himself, a first time rider/purchaser. He was too intimidated to ride the VF for more than a minute or two before he jumped at it. It ran and that convinced him along with the college boys assurances about the bike and about his mechanic. but he had not gotten down the Freeway very far before the temp guage had pegged.
Now, here I was on the hard garage floor of the house my ex had stolen from me, looking up at my son's bike with my hands covered in motor oil. It had appeared to have even and acceptable compression when he purchased it. How so with it's front two cylinders running with their valves seriously out of time?. Not only that, he had driven it a couple 100 miles like that. He had complained that the cycle ran too hot on the initial ride home, but it was still able to motor down the 5 freeway in commuter traffic from near Saugus,( north of LA), back to Laguna Hills where he lives with his mother. I had not expected to have to get down into such a mess with this particular engine and its problematic cam design history. But there I was in the process of removing the top guide, the oil lines, the cam holders/bearing caps, the sprockets, the cams, the chain guides and tensioners, in a search for a reason behind the mess he had dived headlong into for too high a price, pulling me in after him.
The constant complaint for the next month or more was that the '84 VF 500F ran hot. No complaints about performance or knocking to me 57 miles away in the inland empire. Eventually he was told by a work friend that it sounded like it had wrist pin knock. He parked the bike and started bumming rides to school and work.
Now I was down on the garage floor checking and rechecking the valve timing in complete and utter surprise at what I was witnessing. The manner of checking was the method described in the only commercial manual specific to the VF 500F. It's the CLYMER manual number N329 which covers Honda 500cc V4's, 84 through 86 . The method is to set up cylinder #1 at Firing TDC per the 1 and 11 o'clock cam lobe positions as seen on the VFR, cam lobes pointing to a place above the rear head's top chain guide and then getting the fine adjustment by checking the lines scribed on the outer edges of the rear cam sprockets per the manuals instructions, against the straight edge of the rear cylinder head cover gasket seal surface. To get the front cylinders in sync, the lobes of the #4 cylinder cams are placed at 7 and 1 o'clock, pointing away from each other, along parallel lines. this is done while the #1 cylinder is held in place at firing TDC. Again the fine adjustment is done by aligning the lines scribed on the front cam sprockets per the manual instructions, against the straight edge of the front cylinder head valve cover mating surface. Some idiot had f**ked the '84 VF 500 up good and it appeared that the Christian College boy had sold my son a bill of goods in order to palm his nightmare off onto my 18 year old.
The final insult however, was discovered when the rear top cam chain guide was removed and compared to the front top cam chain guide. A normal top cam chain guide, when looked at from its long side, is straight. If you include the four feet that are used to attach the guide to the head using the 4 inner cam bearing cap bolts, it looks like a shallow "C" or like an elongated table whose legs straddle the underlying chain. The rear top chain guide had been purposefully damaged. The witness marks of where a circular flat end of what was probably a rod of sufficient length to allow its being hammered down from above the line of the seat, was clearly visible in the middle of the back of the damaged guide. The circular witness mark was of approximately the same diameter as the width of the top chain guide. The tool used to disfigure the guide was probably a solid cylindrical metal rod of the aforesaid diameter. This had been pounded down into the middle of the top chain guide with sufficient force so as to bend what was intended to be a straight guide into one which, when looked at from the long side view, appeared like a shallow "M". The friction material applied to the underside of the top guide for the chain to wear against was disrupted, broken in twain and nothing but a knarl ,which acted to force the cam chain down for what can only be guessed was an attempt to take up any slack in an improperly installed cam, chain, chain guide and chain tensioner assembly. This disruption had been done recently, perhaps only a few miles before my son had driven the bike, for in no way had the profile of the double row of the chain made any inroad into the newly exposed friction material in the knarl. In all my years as a line and unit room mechanic I had never seen such incompetence and so obvious an attempt to defraud either a customer or a potential buyer with expediency and deception. Someone had taken a rod and hammer and pounded the chain noise away!
At that moment all I wanted was a nice thick brass or steel rod about a 18 inches long and that christian prick's head to pound it into. I would sure have liked to turn what had been a round fat head into a soft and formless mass of pulp. But that was not all. All of the peering at the cam lobes had revealed that the cam lobes were damaged. They were pitted more than wiped. But they were ugly all the same.
The cam bearing surfaces in the heads were also damaged. There were obvious wipe marks on the cam bearing surfaces of both head's. The cam holder/bearing caps were also damaged. I did not have any plastigauge at the time or I would have checked the cam bearing clearances before writing this.
So, why have I bothered to write out this object lesson in human deception and venality? If Christian college boys studying for the ministry can justify cheating a kid, if he can justify lying about the condition of a motorcycle that he had been trying unsuccessfully for over a month or two to sell, if he is willing to doing something as dangerous as expose a cam chain on a motorcycle to a mechanical failure capable of causing a fatal accident just to gain a few hundreds of dollars, if he is willing to 'jimmy' the indicator of mechanical failure so that he can trick some naive high school kid into handing over his whole wad based on his child’s perception of the honesty of his fellow man while this “brothers keeper” palms off his problem on an unsuspecting youth for over twice or three times as much as it is rightfully worth......In such a world what chance does anyone have? If christian boy can do that then I guess I'm justified in crushing his skull if my son dies a result of the cam chain breaking causing the bike to fall and my son to die. Christianity be damned, and so it is, Christian college or no, it’s the law of the jungle, it's “let the buyer beware” taken to its cynical conclusion. I could always put it back together at the minimum cost and let someone else's son or daughter take the chance christian boy was willing to put on my son. Money above principle, let the buyer beware!
But what can be done to salvage this situation? The cams probably have too much clearance in the cam bearings and too much damage on the cams themselves. The Clymer manual says that in such a case you have to replace the heads and cam holders as units. If that is true you would necessarily have to replace the cams as well. That's well into $1500 for parts if you buy new ones. What good would it be to buy new heads and put some ground meat excuse for cams into the new cam bearings? Metal spray the old cams? Align bore the old cam bearings? Pay through the nose for some junk yard cams? What can I do to salvage this basket case my son paid $1500 for. Any ideas?

 

My suggestion would be to buy another VF500. You should be able to find a decent working vf500 for around $1000. I paid $600 for one, and $700 for another. Both titled, one came with stock exhaust, the other Vance and Hines. After combining the parts, I now have a $1500 bike.

They'll never be worth much, but I think they're a great all around bike. They get decent gas mileage, and they're just fast enough to keep up with the 600s of that era.

Mine handles like it's on rails, and if I ever need parts of it, I just check the other bike. Parts on ebay are also prevalent. Other than that, I don't know what to tell you. $1500 in cams is too much for a bike that mints around that price. I am currently looking for a fresh set of valve springs for my bike, as it's nearing 20k. I suspect you could find a working or even a non working vf500 for parts relatively cheaply. That would be your best solution, although it does not guarantee a working product in the end. Hope this helps with your conundrum.

Also, in my opinion, I'd suspect the malpractice was more likely the result of some shifty bike mechanic rather than a college kid. It sure does sound more like the work of a redneck than a college student.

 

I am sorry that some one calling them self a Christian(therefore representing other Christians) has caused you such grief and potentially bodily harm.
People are dishonest by nature and even religion cannot change this.
I feel like I should apologize for this person(being a Christian myself), but I choose not to.
I agree with your disgust for their actions.
I would ask that you not see all Christians as dishonest, but give individuals a chance to prove themselves by their own actions.

 

You should be able to get a motor for about $2-$300. If it has a starter, you should be able to turn it over and test the compression.

You can also pull the valve covers to verify the timing and look at the coms. Blipping the starter to get the engine rotated to the correct position.

The only thing you won't know until you get the engine installed and running is if the transmission is good.